Courtesy of Joz, who snapped this in Launceston.

Recently governments have been talking about “greenhouse gas reduction targets” and other well-meaning things, for the purpose of preventing ecological collapse within the next century, but in reality, it could well be that if we don’t take very drastic measures in short order, we’ll push the planet into ecological collapse. Scientists from all over the world are stating that climate change estimates have been vastly understated and that we may only have 5 or ten years in which to make changes. Even if you’re a skeptic, can one really ignore numerous respected scientists saying the same thing? Is this something we want to gamble on? The result will be, quite literally, the death of millions of people.

Imagine that you get home every day to find that food has gone missing? This man, who incidentally lives in the same city as myself, had the sense to install a camera which revealed a woman who had been living in an unused closet in his house!

Heads! This 55kg chunk of plane, that apparently is a door for accessing the air conditioning gear, fell off a plane and landed in a field near Narita Airport, east of Tokyo. Oops. Nobody was hurt an the plane landed safely. Funny I didn’t hear about it in the news. I guess there needs to be a major landing drama for anyone to bother reporting it as major news.

From the SMH:

Some youngsters are spending hours at night on email with their friends. One fad is “the 30 minute rule,” in which a child who doesn’t respond to email within half an hour gets targeted and picked on by other schoolmates.

In Japan, people don’t use computers like we do, they do all their chatting on their mobiles via complex email messages. So where the computer has replaced the TV as the family addiction in other countries, it’s the mobile phone in Japan.

Just when you thought they couldn’t get any thinner…

You can also get a waterproof phone. Apparently this was a significant customer request.

Click on the images for the full article.

Finally people in the right places are starting to take notice of the world’s biggest polluter, livestock grown for meat consumption. I fear the industry will do its utmost to preserve itself, however, taking us down with them. They don’t realise that they aren’t going to have many customers to sell to in a few years.

According to the U.N. report, the livestock sector internationally generates 18 percent more greenhouse gas emissions, as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, than the transport sector.

Furthermore, the livestock sector also damages the ecosystem, as it is a major contributor to land and water degradation. And the problem is expected to get worse. The U.N. noted that global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tons in 1999 to 465 million tons by 2050.

The livestock sector now uses 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface. Most of the use consists of permanent pastures. But 33 percent of the global arable land is now used to produce livestock feed, the report said. One result is deforestation, as old-growth forests that absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide are cleared to create new grazing areas.

In Latin America, some 70 percent of forests in the Amazon region have been turned over to grazing, the U.N. said.

The livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of carbon dioxide deriving from human-related activities and 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Most of this comes from manure.

The sector is also responsible for 37 percent of all human-induced methane, which is produced largely by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of all human-induced ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain, the report added.

Computery types who use the terminal a lot to do their work on Mac OS X, Linux or *BSD will appreciate these handy bash shell tips from Debian Administration. I wish I’d know there was an easy way to quickly re-run commands, search through the shell history or repeat the second last directory change years ago. Would have saved me a lot of time recently.

Wired has an article on Hiroyuki Nishimura, the wildly infamous owner of 2channel, the no-holds-barred Japanese web BBS. Having been sued successfully many times by many people who have been flamed on the board, he doesn’t show up to court appearances any more and has never paid from any of the rulings against him. Doesn’t say much for the Japanese legal system then, does it? His latest hit, however, is a Youtube-like site where people can write comments over posted videos, which has become one Japans most visited sites.

A Japanese student of mine emailed me with an English question yesterday, asking:

“There’s no sense ( in, of ) carrying on that way.”
The answer is “in”. But, I couldn’t make sense this meaning clearly. Is it some kind of construction of a sentence?
“in …….way” means like “in that way”??? But, if so, how about “carry on”(=go on)???

It was interesting for me to think about how we use “in” and “on” in English beyond “I live in Japan” or “I’ll go there on the 5th”. Here is my reply:

“There’s no sense in (doing something).”

It means “in this situation” or “in these circumstances”. You’ll often see in buildings “In case of fire, do not use lifts” which is very abbreviated English. I suppose that “in” means “while this is the case/is happening” or something like that. Also “Just in case…” and probably many other examples.

“Carry on” means “keep going” or “(yes you may) go ahead”. Also there’s “keep on going” which means “don’t stop”. Whereas “in” encompasses not just a physical “inside” but gives us the imagination of being in a situation, “on” puts us “on stage” where something is currently the focus of our attention. For example, we “put on a record” or “put on a cd”. The latter came from the former, as you physically had to put the record on the player. We also have “It’s on TV”.

So in summary (ha!): “In” encompasses a situation. “On” refers to an event currently happening that is our focus.